


Up To The Task

by Vermillions



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, more force ghosts than is necessary or possible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vermillions/pseuds/Vermillions
Summary: Rey turned to Luke. “Master, what’s down there?” Luke looked back at her from inside his weathered hood and said, “only what you carry in with you, Rey.” It was not the answer she was looking for. She steadied herself and climbed down.Rey signed on for one master, she really was not expecting multiples... a possible reality post Episode VII.





	1. A Little Help

**Author's Note:**

> This is a small fic I started shortly after TFA was released and then promptly forgot to post. As I wrote it before any info regarding TLJ was released, it doesn't feature much of Rose, or any Porgs, or Crylo's new TIE or the SF TIE, or those fabulous foxes, etc. But it does feature an illogical amount of Force ghosts. Take it as a "the way things could've been" type of AU. I just wanted to write about Force ghosts and Rey kicking ass, so there you have it. :) 
> 
> Please comment if you like it, wanna share TLJ theories, etc.!

\--

_Whack, grunt, skritch._

These were the first sounds of Rey’s every morning. 

_Whack._

Luke would prod at the low mud ceiling above her palette with the blunt end of his staff, little more than a gnarled stick. 

_Grunt._

Rey would sit up in bed with a crack from her bones and a groan from her throat. 

_Skritch._

Luke would shuffle outside to meditate, and Rey would pull her boots up off of the sandy floor and hobble out to join him. 

The last three mornings had passed in the same way: Rey would awaken, meditate with Luke, eat a small breakfast, and then carry Luke around the island on her back. Today as she huffed along, back sore, she presumed the rest of the day would continue in the same fashion as the rest: Luke would hardly speak and set her to solving stone puzzles on the jagged steps, and Rey would no doubt end up holding a handstand for hours after that, alone in the grass at the top of the mountain, well into the night. Luke seemed adamantly against sparring with her, and Rey was growing impatient. Tranquility in the face of imminent danger seemed more than a little absurd, but for all his grumpy quietude, Rey trusted in Luke’s guidance.

She trudged up the stairs for what seemed like an eternity. Her knees were beginning to buckle. She felt her eyelids drooping like thick bags of leather, but she refused to stop. She climbed and climbed into the thin atmosphere, heedless of the mist and the sea. All those years she had spent picturing a peaceful island floating out in the ocean amongst crashing waves…. this was not what she had wanted to be doing when she got there.

All at once, Luke slid from her back. Rey stumbled and fell, catching herself and rolling off the steps and onto the level grass. They had reached a small grass circlet, framed by outcroppings of thin, cold rocks. Luke deposited his cloak on the ground and stepped into the circle as Rey stood, hands on her knees, panting. 

Luke said nothing. But in a flash, he drew his saber from his belt. Rey barely had a moment to recognize the blade as a weapon: she hadn’t even glimpsed it before. Had he always had it on his person? She dodged with a loud gasp of air, the green fragment of light passing by her ear, and drew her own blade from her belt.

The moment the weapons clashed, her arms felt like molten lead. They were so heavy, and her legs were so shaky, she could barely stand. Her lightsaber seemed to squirm in her hand, a light little feather in an iron grip. Rey grunted and attempted to push Luke back, but to no avail. Instead she was forced to duck and twist to the left. Luke circled around her almost leisurely, like a contented vulture, his expression blank. Rey found herself parrying his blows rather than making any of her own.

It did not take long for Luke to disarm her. His old lightsaber rolled away from her and she winced, face lit in green by the blade below her neck. Luke withdrew, and Rey did not look at him. 

Luke walked a ways upwards, to the edge of the cliff, and looked out over the water. Rey’s face stung as though she had been struck. A wave of self-doubt washed over her. Luke said nothing. Neither of them moved.

A sharp wind hit Rey. But when she moved to adjust her hair, she found that it hadn’t been tussled at all. No wind. A strange bluster within the Force itself. She felt it against her skin, like a gentle pressure. It felt… purple? She scanned the area, but nothing was amiss.

At length, Luke spoke. 

“I don’t want you to think…” he said, back still turned to her, “that I don’t… take this, or you, seriously.”

He walked slowly back to the ring. “It’s… I failed before. And I find, despite my age, that I am not ready to give in or… to fail again.”

He looked at Rey with some semblance of a smile. His eyes were warm, like a child’s. “But to help you, Rey,” he said with a sigh, “I think I may need some help of my own.”

He nodded to himself, then smiled at something over Rey’s shoulder. “I hope you heard that,” he called out. 

But Rey turned, and there was nothing there. She looked back at him and wondered if he hadn’t gone completely mad out here on the island after all. But Luke smiled at her and nodded his head towards the other end of the ring once more. 

Rey set her mouth in a wry line and finally said “Master, what is it I’m missing here?”

“Help,” Luke replied. He took her by the shoulders and turned her, gently, to face the ring. 

“Shut your eyes,” he said. She did. 

“Now, when you open them, don’t try to see with them. Try to see with your heart. Feel the Force around you and let it show you what it wants you to see.”

Rey breathed deeply. She concentrated on that odd purple pressure. Then after a moment she opened her eyes. 

Nothing. 

At first. Then in front of her there seemed to appear a haze. She squinted at it, and pulled at the Force. All at once, as if accompanied by a pop, a figure snapped into view from the particles of the haze. Rey jumped back. It was a man in his late fifties, with a white beard and a twinkle in his eye, his countenance shimmering like the edge of a lightsaber. 

“Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rey. Rey, master Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“A pleasure,” said Obi-Wan with a nod of his head.

“Are you… a hologram?” asked Rey tentatively.

Obi-Wan smiled. “No, my dear, I am a dead man.”

Rey felt her eyebrows jerk upwards, and as she took a breath, the ring seemed to fill with more people, snapping into being from out of nowhere, each as blue and luminescent as the next. Rey’s mouth hung open.

“I was going to ask my old masters for their help,” said Luke, “but so many Jedi heard the call. This kind of… amassing of souls, it’s unprecedented. I felt it… unwise to refuse their aid.”

Rey blinked at the crowd of transparent people. A handful of vastly varying faces. Some stared her down, several waved. Rey gave a small wave back.

Luke looked at her askance, grinning. “Rey, you are going to have the most unusual Padawan training of all time.”


	2. In The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey ain't afraid of no ghosts. But maybe afraid of force visions.

Rey spent her mornings with master Luke, and most of her afternoons, but some days her lessons were rather forcefully taken over by ghosts. Squabbling ghosts. Luke seemed only too happy to bow out and watch from the sidelines, eating dates, and waving encouragingly whenever she looked his way. At night she learned history, star charts, meditation techniques. She would have to fetch water from a well towards the base of the island each day, and this daily chore found her often accompanied by Kit Fisto, who made quiet jokes and smiled to her as she carried her buckets, regaling her with heroic stories while she climbed the stairs.

Rey was especially glad to have women around; it encouraged her to see female Jedi. She relished time spent with Aayla Secura and Luminara Unduli, and she appreciated the reserved quietude of meditation with these women. Sometimes, over supper, different ghosts would gather around as she and Luke ate their food. Rey liked to hear the women’s stories, and their input in others’ tales. One night they told a tale of Qui-Gon’s early days as a Padawan, and he laughed and remarked “you would none of you be here if not for me” as Luminara sipped her tea and rolled her eyes silently. Qui-Gon tried to tell Rey just how he had managed to guide the spirits of the Jedi to reconnect with the Focre after death, and Rey, though fascinated, couldn’t quite make hide nor hare of it. Not yet, anyway.

As Qui-Gon continued to extole, and Rey’s face remained blank, Obi-Wan winked at her sardonically, which Qui-Gon immediately noted. “You’re all a bunch of ingrates” he said, with the voice of an amused father. Rey was very abruptly reminded, as their shapes shimmered with laughter, that they were none of them alive

###

Rey does especially well with master Yoda.

For the first four hours of their initial meeting, he said nothing to her, and stared off at a patch of flowers just down the hill. So Rey sat, and meditated, and thought. She thought of her AT-AT back on Jakku, she thought of the Millennium Falcon. She thought of Han Solo, and Finn, and General Organa and Poe Dameron and-

“Attachments, you have made. Many.”

Rey opened her eyes. Yoda was standing mere feet from her face.

“Dangerous, a Jedi’s attachments are. Used to control you, they can be.”

Rey didn’t think, but simply said quickly, “I’ve lived without any attachments. And having them is…” she realized what she’d begun to say and faltered under Yoda’s keen gaze.  
“It’s better to have known, and felt, than not to have done so at all. I think.” 

Yoda smiled, and muttered something to himself, then hobbled off. 

“Follow,” he said, “and tell me how you came to know the Force, you will.” 

Rey enjoyed time with Yoda, and relished his wisdom. While Yoda was quietly revered, several of the ghosts glibly referred to Obi-Wan as Master Stick-in-the-Mud. He seemed to Rey to be equal parts stickler and equal parts Grandfather-who-will-tie-your-shoelaces-together-when-you’re-not-looking. On her second day training with the Force ghosts, Obi-Wan set her against a small and rather ancient demo droid that Luke had dragged out of the temple. Rey sparred with the tiny thing for the better part of the afternoon and evening, with Obi-Wan seated to the far side of the ring, watching with an air of leisure, stroking his beard methodically. As the sun began to set, he approached her, and his countenance rippled. Suddenly he was over a decade younger, with an almost ginger beard and a boyishly handsome face. He paused the little droid’s movements and Rey watched him keenly as he cast off his robe like a bird ruffling its feathers, and Luke scoffed.

“What?” Obi-Wan said. “I don’t move as well in an old man’s form, it’s much better like this. Advantages of being dead: are you so eager to join me, Luke? Eh? Come on then!” 

And he set the droid against Rey again, demonstrating the blows she should take and when she should take them. Obi-Wan had a penchant for shouting “Form five!” when Rey’s footing was clumsy, and “oh, just slashing about randomly now, are we?” when a blow went astray. He was always there to provide arrant glances, whatever age he chose to wear in the moment. 

After several days under Obi-Wan’s tutelage, Rey came to recognize his voice. It was the same voice that had spoken to her in the darkness of Maz Kanata’s keep, after Rey’s hand first took hold of her baleful blue saber. “These are your first steps”, he had said, and Rey knew now that it had been Obi-Wan, guiding her from the start, but she did not mention it to him. 

He seemed to almost come to blows with Kit Fisto one night, when Fisto insisted Rey come and learn an ancient Nautolan dance by the bonfire that Luke had made. 

“Master Fisto, surely there is another time for dancing. Perhaps when we have dealt with the threat of the First Order?” said Obi-Wan, hooded and back in his older guise, leaning against the doorframe of Luke’s small hovel.

“I love dancing,” said Luke, standing and dusting the remains of the roots he was peeling off of his robes. “Why don’t you show us both, master Fisto?”

“Luke, really,” Obi-Wan protested, but Kit Fisto laughed and waved his finger at Obi-Wan. 

“Have some fun, Kenobi! The Force is full of joy, let her feel it!” 

As he showed Rey the first few steps to the dance, a forward lean from the waist and hands held sharply, like arrows, he said quietly, “Obi-Wan is mister Obi-Won’t, child.” He winked.

“I can in fact hear you, my deceased green friend,” said Obi-Wan, and Kit Fisto laughed from his belly, a laugh the likes of which Rey had never known. She had never seen anyone so happy. He had an infectious smile, and an infectious air, and soon Rey knew the whole of the dance, and was spinning around the fire with Luke flopping along behind. She laughed and spun, following the sound of Quinlan Vos’s drums and Kit Fisto’s laughter.

But Obi-Wan was right: there couldn’t always be dancing. Not all of Rey’s masters were as focused on meditation and balance as Luke and Yoda, and she found her many teachers’ differing opinions and differing styles discombobulating at best, and overwhelming at worst. Mace Windu was a yeller, and she had to fight to keep her chin up around him as well as her blade, his Form VII attacks were exhausting to defend against. Luminara showed hardly any encouragement, Qui-Gon liked to lecture, albeit softly, and drill the same basic lightsaber positions over and over again, and Rey felt the eyes of every Jedi now and again, following her wherever she went, wondering what they could offer her, how they could keep her safe. 

Luke said she was greatly improving. He led her one day to the opposite side of the small isle, to a tiny ravine, a thin crevice in the stark rock. It was no more than ten feet deep, and Rey readied herself to climb down into it, but as she reached the lip of the crevasse, she froze. A cold feeling clutched at her heart, like the Force itself had gone out. 

Rey turned to Luke. “Master, what’s down there?”

Luke looked back at her from inside his weathered hood and said, “only what you carry in with you, Rey.”

It was not the answer she was looking for. She steadied herself and climbed down.

It was darker inside than it had appeared to be. She settled down cross-legged on the wet, sandy ground, pulling her lightsaber over to lie along her left leg, keeping it from scraping the ground. She tried to meditate, but something grabbed at her mind, like wispy fingers of smoke in the black of the pit. It grew darker down in the chasm. Rey’s eyes were closed, but she could feel it. And then it was burning hot, and Kylo Ren’s tortured blade was there burning red beneath her chin. She panicked. Her heart caught in her throat and she was frozen again in the forest on Takodana, unable to move. The Force had abandoned her. Then she was there in that cold, sterile room on Starkiller base, restrained like an animal while that thing haunted her mind like a monster. He tore through every inch of her, her memories, her hopes, her desires. She felt violated, like her whole brain had been scraped with a razor and her mind torn apart. His eyes were there, inside of her, and she couldn’t run from them. He killed Han Solo, his own father, and she should have killed him then. But the ground had split and rent and… she could see him, hacking away at villagers, tearing through Luke’s younglings, hunting down the remaining Force-sensitives in the galaxy. He was growing stronger, more twisted. He burned with hate and self-loathing. She did not want to face him. She felt his hand on her throat, like it was sinking through her skin, bleeding into her, contaminating all that she was and taking away every inch of her that was her own…

She shot up from the crevice floor, hitting her head on a jutting rock. She could hardly see through her tears, and still the visions haunted her. Ren, torturing others: men, women, children. The things he would do to her if they met again, if she was not strong enough; the ways he would bend her mind and tear her psyche…

She dragged herself out of the ravine, hot tears stinging her blanched face. Luke was calling out to her, grabbing her arm, but she threw him off. His voice sounded distant, like he was in a long tunnel and Rey was plowing forward towards the light. She stumbled up a small slope and towards the copse of tall, thin trees near the ravine. She didn’t stop until her knees collided with a boulder and she fell into the dirt. She buckled like a sodden leaf and sobbed quietly. If she could make her sobs like whispers, maybe no one would hear. She was ashamed to be crying, ashamed to feel so weak. She could face him. She had faced him. But still the visions danced before her, of all that Kylo Ren would do, and she felt her heart slam against her ribs, and for a moment, all she wanted to do was run.

“Do not fear him.”

The voice vibrated in her head and echoed, as though it were bouncing off the surrounding saplings.

Rey stiffened and sat up on her knees, eyes still squeezed shut. 

“I’m sorry, master, please just… let me alone a moment, I’m fine, just let… me…”

She kept her eyes screwed shut, willing her tears to stop, breathing steady. She tried to flush away the image of Kylo Ren’s face, so close to hers, as he pried her mind apart.

“Do not be fearful. It’s your fear that he requires.”

The voice boomed louder, and as Rey opened her eyes she realized it was entirely within her mind. She scanned the young trees, too thin to hide anyone. Then she took a deep breath and scrubbed at her wet face with one grubby sleeve.

“The dark side needs more than fear. It needs hate, and anger, and he has those. He killed his own father.” She said to no one. 

“But it’s fear that drives the darkness. Anger, hate: these are both strong. But fear…. Fear is weakness. It is the panic, the terror of what you hold most dear being ripped away from you. Your fear will strengthen him if you let it. Don’t.” The voice said. 

Beside one thin, mossy tree, a figure appeared, luminescent like her masters. A young man with a scar over his right eye. 

“Fear is the key. Take my word for it,” he said.

Rey stood, watching him. She narrowed her eyes slightly. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” she said.

“No,” replied the ghost with a smile, “you haven’t.” He stepped forward. 

“Calm your fear. Face it. Accept it. Make it yours.” 

The man lifted his hand. A pebble floated up from between Rey’s feet. She watched it rise, then sent it hurtling back towards the glen with a glance. The ghost smiled.

“You are very strong with the Force, aren’t you? You’re much stronger than he is now. Show him his own weakness. Once you face your fears, they cannot be his to manipulate.” He said. Several more pebbles heaved themselves up off the ground as he raised his hand.

“Close your eyes. See him. See him forcing himself into your head. Feel that fear. Do you feel it?”

Rey stood, eyes shut. Her mind pulsed red, like Ren’s flickering blade. 

“Do you feel it?” Repeated the ghost.

A jolt of terror hit her. She tensed. “I feel it,” she said.

“Now draw your saber and fight it,” Said the ghost.

Eyes still shut, Rey took up her blade. She moved with the Force, slashing pebbles away with smooth cuts and arcing slashes. But it was over in moments. She heard the remaining rocks clatter to the ground. Opening her eyes, she felt brighter. Sturdier. Her lightsaber hummed at her side. The ghost was standing before her, smiling slightly, hands clasped in front of him inside his robes.

“Master Obi-Wan does that robe-thing too, when he wants to look extra important,” Rey said quietly, not quite expecting to have said the words aloud. The ghost chuckled like a small schoolboy and shook his hands out at his sides, nodding his head. 

“I’m sure I got it from him,” he said. “Now go. Back to your studies. I don’t think your master likes waiting for you over there.” He nodded towards the glen, behind Rey and down the hill. Rey turned and she could see Luke, sitting and waiting. 

She made a face. “I think I’m going to get my arse handed to me.”

“Then you best power-down and run along,” said the ghost, and with a motion of his hand, Rey’s lightsaber went out.

Rey blinked and hooked the saber to her belt, turning to go, but she looked back. 

“And what do I call you then, master?”

“Me?” said the ghost, sounding a little taken aback. “I’m Anakin.”

“Thank you, master Anakin,” Rey said, with a formal bow of her head. Then she jogged back down the slope to where Luke was sitting. When she turned back to face the tree line, halfway down the hill, she saw no one.

Luke looked grave. Rey bowed her head when she reached him. 

“I’m sorry, master, I just needed to calm my mind- I can go back down there, I can do it-!”

Luke said nothing, his eyes were fixed to the tree line. Rey was mid-apology when he moved past her and back towards the temple without a word. She stood there a moment, biting her lip, then followed behind him quietly. 

Luke said nothing to Rey for the rest of the afternoon; not when she practiced Force movements with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, not when the two of them sat out on the rocky points and meditated until supper, and not while they prepared their meal. Only after they had finished eating, and Kit Fisto was telling an engaging tale about himself and a group of space pirates while Rey scrubbed away at the pots, did Luke break his silence. 

“What did he say to you?” 

Rey looked up at him and stopped scrubbing. 

“The…? In the forest? He said I needed to… face my fears. Embrace them. That fear was the real key to the dark side, the way to… manipulate you.” Rey said.

Luke pulled at his beard, staring ahead. “Yes. Do not block your emotions, Rey; let them flow. Understand them.” He sighed. 

“Listen to what he told you. If anyone knows the dark side… it’s my father.” With that, he stood and walked towards his cot. Rey looked down at her lightsaber, mind racing, but did not press the matter. As she put out the candles, and the ghosts faded away, Rey felt tense, worried. Luke’s father. She understood who that meant, and as she lay down on her palette the tendrils of smoke from the waning candles seemed to form the shape of a mask. She shut her eyes, but could not sleep.

“Master Luke?” asked Rey. He grunted from his place in the dark room. 

“I want to try again. With the cavern?” 

Luke sat up and looked around, smiling briefly, as though he was waiting for something. Then he lay back down. 

“I thought master Yoda would appear just to say this himself, but I guess I’ll say it for him, then: do or do not, Rey there is….” He caught a glimpse of her sitting, up on her palette, eyes shining, hanging on his every word. Then he laughed. 

“Ah, whatever. You can go back in the hole tomorrow.” 

With that he bid her goodnight. And Rey went back into the crevice the very next day and suffered no more visions of Kylo Ren.


	3. It's Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Visions and visits...

Rey lost track of how much time had passed on the island. Weeks, months, she wasn’t sure. Out here, unlike her lonely home on Jakku, she never felt the need to make tally marks. To get away. But sooner or later she would have to.

One day, she felt a new presence. She was in the center of the sparring ring, trading staff blows with Luke, when she felt it. Luke nodded, he sensed it as well, but he continued his advances nonetheless, and after a while Rey forgot about it altogether. Until several familiar shapes appeared on the verge. 

When she caught sight of them, Rey darted forward, but looked back to Luke for approval. He shrugged and smiled, and off she went with a girlish squeal, jumping over the jagged edges of the ring and running to greet her friends, Poe Dameron in a tattered orange jumpsuit, and Finn, sweating profusely and carrying a happily chittering BB-8. 

“Do you know how heavy this guy is?” said Finn, arms shaking. 

“Well, put it down!” said Rey.

“WA-UUHH,” offered BB-8.

“Hey,” said Poe.

At length Finn managed to get BB-8 onto the ground without an unceremonious drop, and Rey threw her arms around his neck. BB-8 blipped and squawked and head-butted her leg. Finn waved his arms and whined about the “never-ending staircase”, Poe talked about the smooth air currents coming in, and Rey just grinned at them both. She turned to hug Poe but stopped midway.

“What are you three doing here?”

Their faces darkened. 

“The First Order is planning an attack.” Said Poe.

“Where? When?” asked Rey.

“On our section of the outer rim, and… we don’t know when.” Said Finn. “We intercepted their transmission hours ago, but couldn’t get a… time. Could be days, hours. We don’t know.”

“We have to assume they’re headed to D’Qar; the General has come up with an infiltration plan, to head them off. We just need to get aboard their stardestroyer.” Said Poe.  
“Just,” offered Finn.

Rey turned to Luke, who was making his way down the hill. “Master, did-!”

“I heard,” he said.

As Luke approached the group, Poe and Finn wore very different expressions on their faces. It appeared as though Poe’s every effort was being spent on keeping his face neutral, eyes slightly narrowed, whereas Finn’s eyes looked like they were going to jump out of his skull, grow mouths, and shriek.

“Is… is that him?” whispered Finn, without looking at Poe.

“I dunno, why don’t you ask him,” Poe whispered back, eyes front.

“You frigging ask him, I don’t-!”

“Boys,” said Rey, with a smile that spelled laughter, “this is Luke Skywalker. Master Luke, this is Finn, and Poe Dameron. And BB-8.”

“Sir,” said Poe, “a great honor.” His tone was almost bitter, but he reigned it in. Whatever he wanted to say to Luke on General Organa’s behalf he was certain that, when the time came, the General would say it all herself.

Finn waved awkwardly. BB-8 beeped.

“Hi,” said Luke. “Now what is this about a stardestroyer?”

“We need to get on it, disable its coms and weapons,” said Poe. Finn nodded.

“I don’t think they’ve changed the schematics on those things in eons. Ben, you spent an awful lot of time on Republic destroyers, didn’t you?” Said Luke, turning to face Obi-Wan, now materializing behind them. 

The ghost shrugged. “Unfortunately.”

“Master Obi-Wan, do you know of any weak points in the hull? Ways we can sneak in some fighters, if we distract them somehow, and maybe the Falcon?” asked Rey.

Obi-Wan tugged at his white beard and said, “I suppose. But the best way to get on board would be to get captured. It’s worked before.” 

Luke rolled his eyes and pushed his hood back. “First of all, that was not a stardestroyer, and it did not ‘work’, it was an accident– and perhaps you recall getting _killed_ in the process?”  
Obi-Wan shrugged and smirked lightly.

“Who… are you talking to?” asked Poe quietly. Luke and Rey turned back to face him.

“Can… Can you not see them?” Rey asked, thumbing at Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon and Kit, standing behind her.

“See who?” said Poe and Finn at once.

“Right.” Said Rey. 

Luke smiled gently and walked back towards the temple. “Come on, if we’re strategizing, let’s get going.”

Rey motioned for the men to follow. BB-8 rolled along after her, telling her all about its’ day. Finn took several dainty steps forward, eyes glancing back and forth. 

“If there’s any invisible people here, I’m sorry if I step on you.”

“Likewise,” said Poe, and they continued up the steps in that fashion.

Rey felt a laugh bubbling up in her chest as she looked back at the pair of them, wobbling up the stairs, but all at once she stopped. She felt as though a shockwave had hit her: the Force buckled and rippled. And then her eyes went dark.

She was standing in a corridor, fires burning, wires spewing sparks. Stormtroopers ran past her, dragging wounded comrades. To her right, a door slid open with a terrible metallic scraping sound, pushed off its rail by the force of some previous blast. Kylo Ren stood beyond the door inside a black room, surrounded by troopers and several members of the Resistance, kneeling on the cold floor. Rey knew many of them. They were her friends. Finn and Poe, bleeding but steely-eyed; general Organa, determined, but mournful. Ren killed them all. One by one, he removed their heads. Even his own mother’s, but not before her damp eyes looked up at him, lovingly, and her lips whispered “I’m sorry.” Then she was gone. 

The scene changed, and Kylo Ren was standing before a dark console up on the ruined bridge, Luke’s body lying cold at his feet. Luke’s blue eyes were staring up at Rey, tears still pooling in them. Kylo Ren’s hand shook, hovering over a switch. Then he annihilated their star system with his eyes full of tears, and everyone Rey had ever loved was gone in a matter of minutes. And Kylo Ren took her away into the darkness, to a cell where he need not pry at her mind so long as he had implements with which to burn her, and Rey wished only for death, only to join her friends and her master, but Ren would shock her awake and continue his work, crying as he went; snapping her bones with the Force, yanking her nails from her skin, then leaving her to die there on the failing, crashing ship…

“Rey?”

She nearly broke Finn’s nose, her elbow flying back to hit him as he shook her shoulder. Shocked, but shaking like a leaf, she apologized.

“Finn, I’m- I’m so sorry, I didn’t-“

She tried to calm her mind, her breathing…

“What did you see?” 

Luke was in front of her now, grimy hood framing his worried features. 

Rey shook her head. “If we go on that ship, everyone will die. The Resistance, everyone in the outer rim… every one of you!”

She blinked, eyes burning. “We have to… do something else.”

“There is nothing else,” said Poe calmly.

Rey put a hand over her mouth and looked away. She tried to see past Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, standing close and watching with worn faces. Rey was not prepared to see her friends die. She had watched Han Solo fall, and had felt powerless. And she felt powerless now. She squeezed her eyes shut and wracked her brain for something, anything… anything to change her vision…

“We have to go, Rey,” said Finn, brave-front fully in place. “Kylo Ren needs to be stopped.”

Rey’s eyes flew open.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I have to stop him.” 

She pushed past them and bolted down the stairs. 

“Rey!” Luke yelled after her, “there’s no time-!”

“I have to see master Anakin!” She yelled as she ran, heedless of the wind stinging at her eyes. She ran all the way to the crevasse, then past it and up into the green grove.

“Master! MASTER ANAKIN, PLEASE!” She cried out, chest heaving as she braced her arm against the boulder that had tripped her once before. 

Anakin appeared before her. “You’re in a hurry,” he said.

Rey looked pale, like a ghost herself. “Please… tell me how to change Kylo Ren.”

“Change him?” Anakin’s eyes narrowed and he looked bleak. “I don’t know if there is any way to change him.”

“But I-!”

The ghost stepped closer to her. “But… if there’s anyone who can help him, it’s you.”

He turned away from Rey. “That boy is awash, his mind and his heart… they’re everywhere at once. He grapples with both sides of the Force, just as he grapples with his own emotions.”

Rey grimaced. “He’s a monster. I don’t care about his emotions. He stabbed his father through the chest! Slaughtered his friends-!”

“I did worse,” Anakin said quietly. Rey was silent, staring at him. 

“I can’t reach him,” Rey said. Her eyes were pleading. “But you can.” 

Anakin watched her carefully. 

“I cannot appear to Kylo Ren,” He said.

“Why not?!”

“Because he will not see me. He will not accept what his eyes witness– only turn away and crawl further into his doubt and self-pity.”

“Then show me!” Rey barked.

Anakin was silent.

“Show me everything,” Rey said, stepping towards him, “everything you did. All the horrors they lay at your feet, show me. Then I can show him. Distract him long enough to… kill him.”

Anakin looked away. “Child, your eyes do not-“

“Please, Master.” Rey all but whispered.

The ghost looked her in the eye, and she did not waver, a gaze both pleading and iron-clad. Anakin did nothing for a moment. Then he reached out, slowly, and pushed two glowing fingers through the hilt of his old lightsaber.

Rey felt a sharp pull inside her gut, and her feet felt far away from solid ground. Colors flew past her, as though she were blazing through the sky, a comet in a brilliant descent. Then the colors became images, and the movement became feelings, and everything was like a waterfall, drumming against Rey’s skull with the force of a hundred boulders. Scenes flew past her, chrome and smoke, towering spires, sand. She held a woman in her arms, dying. Then her lightsaber was in her hand, and dozens fell to her rage. She stepped over the ragged corpses of an entire village. Her ears popped, she could feel the blood pounding in her head. Conflict, anger, sorrow. She was standing by a window and she could see Master Windu, sharply illuminated by cracks of lightning. As the bolts surged through his body, Rey felt the heat, the power. She severed his hand and watched him fall away into the lights and the screeching sounds in the abyss. She felt horrified. Guilt overran her senses, and grief, but she sat before the gnarled figure with the mad eyes and helped him stand. She was so afraid. She had to help her family. She was moving again, and the pain thrummed in her skull like an executioner’s march. Her lightsaber killed children as they stood screaming, cowering behind chairs, crying for their masters. 

She could feel bile in her mouth, and so much anger, the colors swimming around her, Jedi falling, an entire room of people slaughtered. She grasped her wife’s throat with the Force and squeezed until she could hardly feel a pulse beating there. How could she do this to her own wife? How could she fight her master? Obi-Wan looked at her with tear-stained eyes and she screamed as she fell to the earth, limbs severed, heart broken, so afraid. But she boiled with anger, burned over with madness and pain and a relentless fury, until fire bit her skin and she screamed in anguish. She couldn’t take her eyes off Obi-Wan, she watched him as he left, as her flesh bubbled and stretched. Then through darkened eyes she saw the rest of her life, following the mad man in hooded guise, walking with heavy legs that weren’t hers, the mottled skin of her face pulled back and pricked with a dozen whirring needles. Each breath felt like a new scar, burning through her wretched lungs and out of her torn throat, and all she knew was hatred and darkness and that hidden fear. She killed indiscriminately. She cared for no one. The red blade she carried tore families apart, slaughtered hundreds. She watched an entire planet burn and did nothing, nothing at all. She felt nothing but her own pain. Carried so much hatred that she did not even know her own children, and when she did, it did not keep her fury from taking Luke’s hand. She watched Luke struggle and fall, she felt the pain and the regret, and the arching madness. She watched the gnarled man send lightning through Luke’s body, over and over again, until her mind simply broke, and she hurled the hooded figure down into the darkness. It was the first time she had glimpsed the light in two decades, and it alit on her misery and her hatred, her fear and her heavy shame. It illuminated her. Then her lungs burnt out.

Rey was kneeling on the ground, rocking gently back and forth. She sputtered through tears and blinked rapidly, trying to focus. The boots standing before her flickered until they had almost vanished, like a thin grey fog wavering in the cool air. 

“Show him,” Anakin said, in a voice so distant and broken that Rey hardly recognized it. “This is the only legacy I can give. Show him… how it feels. Break him, if you must. These things… cannot be allowed to happen again. To continue to happen.”

Rey stood and nodded, hands balled tightly inside her vest pockets. 

“Now go,” said the ghost, flickering out of view.

“Thank you, master,” she whispered, and ran back to the temple. It was beginning to rain. As she breached the top of the hill, she could see Luke illuminated in the temple doorway, arms crossed, eyes set dead ahead, and Rey knew that this time he wouldn’t be running away.


	4. Infiltration

###

Nine minutes and forty-seven seconds. That was how long their ramshackle little infiltration group had been aboard the massive stardestroyer. And that was all the time they'd needed to watch their plan fall to pieces right in front of them. General Organa had come aboard on her own, a last ditch effort for peaceful resolution with her son, much to everyone’s surprise. This had not been part of the plan, and while it should have bought the small team– launching into two of the destroyer’s tiny air shafts in a huddle of x-wings– time to disable the artillery mainframe (in the vernacular: blow it to pieces), it bought them only enough time to be hounded by stormtrooper squadrons mere minutes after clambering out of their fighters and onto the ship. As they bolted down a long hall, hallowed by blaster gunfire, a pair of blast doors snapped shut in their midst, separating Luke, Poe, and BB-8 from Rey and Finn.

“Keep going! We’ll shut off the coms!” shouted Rey through the heavy door, even as Finn pulled at her arm. 

As they raced down the adjacent corridor she could feel the others beyond the metal, and knew her master, cordoned off on the side of the hall where the bridge elevator was located, was steeling himself to protect the sister he hadn’t seen in a decade. Rey tried to clear her mind of everything, but the barrage of blasts following them left her vision pockmarked with puffs of smoke.

Finn and Rey were faster than their small group of pursuers and managed to skitter around two corners and down a thin industrial corridor before losing the stormtroopers in their wake. They came at last, panting, to a small control room and, opening the door, incapacitated the four stormtroopers and two officers that were inside. Then Finn set to work attempting to disable the ship’s main communications, to keep the bridge from putting out a call for reinforcements.

“Working quickly I hope?” said Rey, pacing in place and watching the door, swinging her lightsaber agitatedly in her right hand.

“Doing my very best,” said Finn, teeth gritted, glaring at a code screen that he’d never seen before. The screen flashed, a harsh beep was emitted, and Finn pounded one fist against the console.

“They’ve updated it, Rey, they’ve updated it,” he said, throwing his hands up.

But Rey didn’t have time to look. The door to the small chamber flew open, and seven stormtroopers were standing on the opposite side of it.

No one moved. And in a flash, not really expecting it to work, Rey reached out and said: “You don’t see anything.”

She repeated it as the troopers simply stood there. 

Three troopers said aloud “I don’t see anything,” and marched off, but their four compatriots called after them and angrily opened fire on Rey. She repelled the first handful of blasts, and sent two troopers to the floor with refracted bolts from their own guns. A third trooper moved to bash her in the head with the butt of his blaster rifle, but she ducked under his arms and caught him in the back of the neck with the pommel of her saber, stunning him. To the fourth she dealt a blow to the side, and he collapsed outside the door. She dragged him inside quickly, keeping the hallway clear of any sign of disruption, and knocked him on the helmet for good measure.

“Alright!” Yelped Finn, a bead of sweat trickling down the bridge of his nose, “Come mind-control this damn computer, please!”

“Is this the only com hub on the whole ship?” asked Rey.

“No, but we only need to take one down to permanently damage the coms, and we need to do it soon!”

“Maybe we should shoot it?” Offered Rey.

“No, we have to be…” Finn thought about it for a moment, then swore. “That… was kind of stupid.”

He removed a small grenade from his jacket pocket, opened a sequence converter, and shoved the tiny detonator inside. 

“Right. Let’s blow it up.” He said with an exaggerated shrug, and he and Rey bolted from the room.

“If we can make it back to that blast door they dropped on us,” Finn was shouting as they thundered down the corridor, “Then we can-“

He stopped dead in his tracks. 

“What?” Rey said, sliding to a stop. “Finn, what are you doing?”

Finn was frozen in place, eyes writhing in his sockets, staring straight at Rey as they shook. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to raise his blaster up towards his head, finger hovering over the trigger, his eyes fixed on Rey.

Rey whirled. Standing at the opposite end of the corridor was Kylo Ren. He cocked his head, his ridiculous mask all but mocking her. Rey’s face contorted into a furious grimace. Finn’s blaster was almost to his temple now. If she could just–

Behind them, the detonator went off.

The little explosive packed a wallop, tearing through its tightly-contained room and through the walls of the hallway, knocking Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren off their feet. 

Rey rolled towards Finn, who was unconscious and powdered with soot and dust from the blast, but otherwise uninjured. A squad of stormtroopers was approaching from behind Kylo Ren, and Rey deflected their blaster fire, trying to quell her anger as she fought. 

“Leave her!” Kylo yelled in his mechanized voice. “Take the traitor, but leave her to me.”

“Don’t touch him!” Rey yelled, but as she did, Kylo worked off of her momentary distraction and sent a hunk of metallic wall flying at her. She dodged, but slipped and fell, rolling closer to Kylo’s position in the fork between two corridors.

From the ground, Rey Forced Kylo’s right foot into the air, causing him to flip onto his back. She crawled over towards Finn, but something hard hit her, and she was soaring across the hall and into an open room behind Kylo Ren. She hit the floor with a dull crack.

Struggling to get up, Rey could see Kylo approaching, saber drawn and crackling. But Rey refused the invitation to fight. She felt woozy, and knew she was losing consciousness. Blinking rapidly, Rey drew up two slabs of fallen metal from behind Kylo Ren and yanked them in her direction, the pieces crashing into Ren’s back with a flat smack and sending him reeling into the room, past Rey. She released her hold on the metal pieces, her head drooped, and everything went dark.

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, fraidy-Luke in the new trailers makes me SO NERVOUS. Man up, dude! You're worrying me! This whole movie is giving me heartburn and it's not even December yet...


	5. Duel of the Fates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Give him the chair! Or hit him with the ceiling, whatever works!

The ship’s emergency alarm rang in Rey’s ears like a peal of thunder. The room was all but destroyed. In front of her, Kylo Ren was casting off the rubble she had thrown on top of him, mask broken, his pale, scarred face full of a blinding rage. He sent several chunks of debris flying her way. Rey dodged them, and as the warning sirens blared, Kylo Ren let out a strangled, rage-torn bellow and hurled the remaining debris at Rey. As Rey caught the pieces in midair, Ren darted to her right, attempting to gouge her side. She struck him in the shoulder with a length of floating pipe and he reeled backward, but recovered. Their blades met, sparks shuttling off of Ren’s weapon as Rey’s hummed. 

She cast a hunk of the ceiling at him. He deflected it and hurled it back at her. But Ren was growing tired, Rey could feel it. He stumbled in boots that were slippery with his own blood. Rey had caught him under his knee with a floor fragment, though he managed to broadside her with a circuit panel moments later. Blood was dripping into her right eye from the cut the panel had left, but she could see far more blood leaking into Ren’s boot. She must have cut him near his femoral artery. He had lost quite a lot of blood, but as he had before on the wreckage of Starkiller base, he kept on fighting.

Then Kylo lashed out with a snarl, and when the blades of their sabers met he attempted to slide his blade down to the hilt of Rey’s weapon. He angled the right crossvent forward abruptly in an attempt to burn her hand, but Rey stomped on the inside of his wounded leg with her heel. With an anguished cry, Ren’s leg buckled, and he fell to one knee. At once, Rey kicked his saber from his hand, and as it skittered towards the far doorway of the room, Rey heaved a chunk of air duct up from the pile of rubble, and crushed the hilt into the floor.

Kylo Ren all but hissed. His hair fluttered around his face like a misplaced set of elegant feathers. The air around Rey became thick. Debris flew up from the floor and new gashes tore themselves into the wall with the sound of screeching metal. Kylo Ren began to yell, a guttural sound, eyes fixed on Rey as the rubble orbited him as though he was some dark, forlorn planet. Rey darted between fragments and projectiles, being forced further and further from the place where Ren sat. He was screaming now.

“DO YOU STILL THINK YOU HAVE MORE POWER THAN ME? DO YOU?! THAT YOU CAN WIELD THAT LIGHTSABER IN MY PLACE?”

The ring of debris spun faster and faster now, whipping up a wind inside the cold room of the ship. Rey squinted to keep the dust and shrapnel from flying into her eyes, hear ears popping under the pressure.

“YOUR POWER IS ONLY FEAR, AND HATRED! HATRED YOU BEAR FOR YOURSELF!” She yelled over the din.

“I WILL BE THE STRONGEST SITH THERE HAS EVER BEEN!” Bellowed Kylo Ren, eyes twinging a painful red. The room shook and the ceiling rained shrapnel down between the two of them.

“THEN YOU WILL HAVE FAILED!” Rey screamed. 

She cut through a chunk of metal in front of her and began to move through the churning debris field. Bits of rubble struck her cheek, then her nose, but she paid them no heed, carving a path towards Kylo Ren. The more Rey fought, the more Kylo screamed, and the faster the rubble spun in its massive loop. A large tile struck her shoulder, and she reeled and fell with the force of the blow. Ren laughed and sent pieces of a barrage door tumbling down on top of her, but Rey rolled away, towards the inside of the circle, and flipped onto her feet just past Kylo’s wall of rubble. He had only a moment to counter and he drove a hunk of concrete up from the floor. Rey turned it around and broadsided him with it.

Kylo Ren toppled over, and his airborne projectiles hurtled to the floor around him. He lay there, chuckling. Rey took a step forward, but Kylo sat up quickly and grasped her throat with the Force. His head pounded, veins pulsing in his forehead, blood dripping from his nose. But Rey fought it, fingers grasping the air around her neck, shaking with the power of the Force, her toes barely touching the ground. She dropped her saber.

“I HAVE A LEGACY TO FULFILL!” Shouted Ren, voice cracking.

“I have something… f-for you,” Rey sputtered, eyesight beginning to fade. She let out a determined cry, from down inside her core, and wrenched herself free of the chokehold with a loud crack, rubble from the floor sliding away from her and shattering against the wall. She saw the whites of Ren’s eyes as she stepped forward and Forced his hands behind his back.  
She felt eerily calm now.

“I have a present, from one of my masters. Feel your way through that legacy of yours…” Rey said. Then she wrapped her hand around Kylo Ren’s throat, and at once he was vaulted through visions of the clone wars, of Darth Vader, murder and carnage; everything Rey had seen.

Kylo sputtered as though he wanted to cry out. 

“HOW DOES IT FEEL?” Rey screamed. “IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED? MORE DEATH, MORE PAIN? IT ONLY LEADS TO RUIN. FOR EVERYONE!”

Tears were streaming down Kylo Ren’s grimy cheeks, his eyes darting through blood-red visions. He could see his father, dying slowly, over and over again, and Darth Vader’s shadow looming just across the bridge, waiting for Kylo…

“He chose the light… in the end,” said Rey quietly. “Choose that legacy.”

Then she released him. Kylo fell forward, coughing. 

“You’re a disgrace,” Rey said quietly, and Ren merely wept.

The ship shook, the alarm still sounding. Rey could hear a voice, distant, shouting her name. The ceiling was beginning to crumble. Rey looked away from Kylo Ren, and picked up her saber.

“ _Kill me_.” Kylo Ren said quietly.

Rey stopped. Kylo’s voice sounded hollow, and almost childlike. 

Rey turned to look at him, crumpled in a heap amid his field of debris, the floor around him splattered with blood from his torn leg. He looked up at her with bloodshot, pleading eyes. And Rey saw Han Solo falling into the darkness, shining in those dark eyes as though they were the very chasm that swallowed him up. Her grip tightened around the hilt of her weapon. Ren was watching her with a pitiful, drawn face, streaked with tears. And he repeated his plea.

“No,” Rey answered him, “You have done that yourself.”

And she left him there amid the rubble, and ran out.

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	6. Plan B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to make an exit...

No more than twelve feet out of the door, around the next corner, Rey collided with Finn. Yelling ensued. 

“Rey!”

“Finn!”

A distant mechanized scream announced the approach of a terrified BB-8, followed by a lone, swearing, stormtrooper.

“How did you get away? And where did BB-8 come from?!”

“No time,” yelped Finn, grabbing Rey’s hand, “They dragged me off, BB-8 found me and zapped some, I shot some more: it’s all really boring– this way!” 

He dragged Rey around a corner to their right, Rey’s mind still awash with images of Kylo Ren bleeding out in a circlet of metal and dust. She shook her head.

“Do you know where you’re going?!” She shouted to Finn as he pulled her to one side of the hall, inspected a keypad, then started running again.

“No!” He yelled. 

“Clearly!” She yelled back.

Three troopers rounded the corner ahead of them and opened fire. Finn fired back and Rey raised her saber to deflect the blasts, one red bolt bouncing off her blade and striking the wall to her right, nicking the edge of the door panel. The little control box exploded in spectacular fashion, forcing Finn and Rey back as the door slid open.

The troopers advanced. “In!” Hollered Finn, and he and Rey darted into the now open room, positioning themselves on either side of the doorway, as BB-8 tried to decide which side it wanted to be on. It rolled over to Rey. 

“How did you even get on this side of the ship?” Finn whispered to the droid as the stormtroopers approached.

Locking eyes and sharing nods, Rey and Finn surged around the edges of the darkened doorway and cut the troopers down easily before retreating back out of view. The lights snapped on, and the trooper who had been following BB-8 caught up to them, peeked inside the room, and took a blow to the gut from Rey’s lightsaber.

“Come on!” Rey said, beckoning to Finn and sneaking a look around the edge of the wide doorway, checking for reinforcements, but Finn was looking in the opposite direction, eyes taking in the room around them.

“Whoa,” he said.

Rey turned. The room was full of weapons and implements of war. Ancient blasters, walker feet, an AT-AT head. On the right wall several lightsabers were mounted, among them a dual-bladed saber-staff, and a blade with a cup-shaped silver emitter and a golden choke. 

“Is this from a Y-wing?” Asked Finn aloud, running his hand along a flat frame of metal emblazoned with the symbol of the old rebellion. But Rey’s eyes traveled to a pedestal in the center of the room, where a deformed helmet sat in a platter of ashes, gnarled and hollow. She could feel the Force around her, like it was emanating from the helmet, and flowing from the sabers on the walls. 

“Quick,” Rey said, directing Finn to the lightsaber array, “take those three.”

Finn didn’t question it, they looked too cool. He managed to hook one to his belt and piled the other two in the crook of one arm, still gripping his blaster rifle. As he did so, Rey approached Darth Vader’s helmet, its shattered sockets looking back at her, and gently lifted it from its tray. 

“What! Don’t touch that thing-!” Yelped Finn.

“Let’s go!” Rey replied, running through the door, saber held before her. Finn followed, blaster at the ready, as BB-8 deposited an Old Republic credit from a table into a compartment on one spherical side and rolled out after them.

Finn was whispering angrily to Rey as they ran, eyes locked on the helmet. “Is there still a head in there?”

“No,” said Rey, eyes scanning the fork in the hallway ahead, trying to remember which direction their make-shift landing tube was in.

“Left!” said Finn. Rey hoped he was right. As they charged down the hall, it became an enlarged, curved corridor, and at the end of the curve, several familiar faces appeared. 

General Organa made running in a jumpsuit look regal as she charged towards them, blasters in both hands, with Poe behind her and Luke bringing up the rear, green saber deflecting fire from more than thirty troopers.

“Well shit,” said Finn, as he and Rey skidded to a halt.

“About face!” Barked Leia, firing back at the squad of troopers. “We’re going that way!”

“But the air duct-?” Rey began.

“Isn’t where we’re headed!” said Leia, running past her, “come on!”

Rey and Finn ran after her and BB-8 struggled to turn around, beeping excitedly at Poe.

“So is there a plan of some sort here?” asked Finn as they scrambled into a small, tubular offshoot on the left side of the corridor. 

Poe placed two small explosives at the base of the doorframe as BB-8 bounced through and Luke jumped over the droid. 

“I think the plan is to follow the general,” Poe said. “Also, maybe run faster: short timer on those things.”

“Right,” said Finn, and the three men and the wobbling droid quickly caught up to the women, their quickened pace followed by a loud boom and several screams as the detonators went off and the doorway behind them collapsed.

“The plan is to get off of this ship,” said Luke as the small tunnel emptied them out… into the left side of the main hangar, several stories above the flight deck. They scrambled along the rickety platform, clinging to the railing and making their way towards a far off set of emergency stairs that Leia was pointing to. Below them, several pilots had noticed their entrance and a small group of men was beginning to fire at them.

“How are we going to get a ship out of here?” Exclaimed Rey, stopping to fend off several blasts.

“It helps that it’s already in the air!” Said Luke, a smile in his voice, looking out across the hangar. 

And as he spoke, the sound of canon fire announced the arrival of the Millennium Falcon, sliding into the hangar with an x-wing squad watching her flanks, Chewbacca in the pilot’s seat and Jessika Pava manning the guns with precision, with Rose standing behind her, making sweeping gestures at the group below.

“We’re doing this on the go!” Yelled Leia as the x-wings began firing on the tethered TIE fighters, trying to destroy as many of them as possible. 

“Chewie’s going to drop the gangway and you’re going to get your asses up it, so don’t look down!” Leia’s eyes were like steel, and without waiting for confirmation nods or “yes ma’ams”, she turned, knelt on one knee, and opened fire on two troopers that were rappelling up from the floor and onto their thin little platform. 

The Falcon banked, coming closer, the gangway sliding open. Several stormtroopers made it onto the platform, firing back at the group, as Poe and Finn returned fire and Rey prepared to charge them. A blast from the Force sent the troopers hurtling backwards, slamming through the farmost railing and falling down into the flaming wreckage of a group of TIEs. 

“Leia! More running, less shooting, please!” Said Luke, hand still raised, attempting to pile debris up around the doorway they had come through.

“Shut up!” Leia yelled. 

As she did, the Falcon’s starboard side collided with the tiny walkway and sent the group sprawling.

“CHEWIE!” Luke and Leia shouted as they helped each other up. From the descending gangway, Chewbacca’s distant, indignant reply could be heard. The gangway edged closer to the rickety platform.

“Youth before beauty!” Leia yelled, nodding to Finn and Poe as they all struggled to their feet. The Falcon’s shields were sending bounces of ricocheting blaster fire past them at odd angles.  
Poe Dameron jumped first. He took one foot off the wobbling railing before the other, his leap resembling an elegant jeté as he landed soundly halfway up the ramp, grabbing the floor and hauling himself up. He made it look graceful.

Finn tucked the two loose sabers into the front of his jacket, planted his blaster behind his belt, and followed with a two-footed bunny hop, almost rolling backwards when he landed. He caught himself, grabbing onto one of the shock extenders with an “I’m ok!” and swinging his legs back up over the side.

Leia jumped like Poe had, one foot in front of the other, and landed soundly, but slid backwards a ways, Poe and Finn reaching out to grab her arms. “I’m too old for this,” she muttered.

Rey and Luke jumped at once, the Force guiding them onto the ramp, one after the other, as a flight of TIE fighters from the opposite hangar sailed in, green flashes met with red from the Falcon’s belly. The gangway swung closed and the Falcon was off, x-wings and TIEs in pursuit. Then the ship roared out of the hangar at top speed, passengers scrambling to get seated, x-wings firing at the artillery stations on the destroyer. The lightsabers in Finn’s jacket bounced free and rocketed through the cabin like buoyant canisters of air.

“What the hell were those?” Shouted Poe, who had managed to grab a seat and was fumbling with the belt.

“Souvenirs!” Yelled Finn from his place on the floor, grinning. 

An enormous crack rocked the Falcon, jerking her forward as the detonators Luke and Poe had planted went off and the destroyer was quickly torn apart, bridge to stern. Several escape pods made it out. Leia was watching them.

Chewbacca let out a loud cry from the cockpit, and in response Luke shouted “Everyone hold on!” Then the Millennium Falcon made her hyperjump, with six x-wings following suit.


	7. Onwards and Upwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrapping up...

To Rey it felt like a week had passed by, but it had been a mere two days. Two days of revelry at the resistance base, the tarmac littered with laughing people, booming music, and libations; jubilations that Rey didn’t feel all that present for. She spent as much time as she could in the trees just beyond the airstrip, and her bed was cold and uninviting, full of dreams of Kylo Ren bleeding out onto the sterile First Order tile, his blood as black as night.

She had apologized to General Organa. Or rather, she had found the general seated outside on their first night back, as keen to avoid the booming music and rowdy celebrations as Rey seemed to be. They sat together in silence for a time, admiring the sunset. 

At length, Rey said, “I didn’t kill him.”

And at length, Leia took Rey’s hand, and said, “thank you.”

By the time afternoon rolled around on the second day, the partying had died down, and everyone seemed to be resting. Luke, however, was restless. He had his robe back on, hood up, arms folded within his sleeves as he passed Rey. She was tinkering away at a damaged service droid and looked up at him expectantly. 

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” was all he said, and he kept walking, out into the woods. Rey felt a rush of air leave her lungs. She hadn’t realized how tense she was, or how badly she wanted out of this place.

Luke didn’t ask her to return with him, and perhaps some part of him wanted her to stay there, young and happy amongst allies and friends. But Rey was outside his door waiting, just before breakfast, with her pack slung across her back. 

“Should we get breakfast first?” she asked. He couldn’t help but smile at her.

It was hard parting with her friends again. The general gave her a kiss on the forehead and a wizened smile. Poe gave her a punch to the shoulder, and BB-8 brought her a flower that it had picked all on its own. Finn was trying very hard not to cry, and he held it in, saying “better bring me back one of those glowsticks someday, I did grab them myself”.

The Millenium Falcon ferried Luke and Rey back to their lonely little island, but as soon as she set foot on the soft mossy ground, it didn’t feel lonely to Rey. It felt full. It felt like home.

Obi-Wan was waiting for them both at the top of the stairs. Rey could still hear Chewbacca’s goodbyes echoing over the rocks as they reached the temple.

“Rey brought you a present,” said Luke.

Obi-Wan raised one white eyebrow as Rey knelt down and dug into her pack, removing the lightsaber with the thin golden choke. 

“Master Luke said this was yours,” she said softly, holding it out to the ghost. 

Obi-Wan ran his astral fingers over the pommel, fingertips passing through the grip. 

“It was,” he said, a small smile on his face.

Luke took the lightsaber from Rey and let it float in the air in front of Obi-Wan as Rey went back into her pack for the other two. As she grasped them both, her thumb struck a round object tucked into a burlap covering. Her hands went cold. The mask. She had forgotten all about it. 

Rey straightened up and handed the other two sabers to Luke without speaking. Kit Fisto and Luminara Unduli had come to greet them, standing by as Luke lit one saber. It glowed violet. 

“That one is Mace’s,” said Kit.

“You’re right,” said Obi-Wan.

“And look at this one here,” said Luke, holding out the double-bladed weapon, “I’ve never even seen one before.”

As Luke and the ghosts talked excitedly over the lightsabers, Rey reached into her pack and removed the burlap ball. She closed her eyes and pulled at the Force. Master Yoda was here now, and Mace Windu, examining his old blade. Qui Gon was appearing, and Plo Koon. Rey reached out further, letting the Force expand from her like tiny tendrils of light. She called out once, twice. And at last she got an answer.

She turned to face the pinnacle of rocks at the far edge of the temple circle, and with shaky hands unwrapped the burlap bundle. 

She dropped the cloth on the ground and looked at the mask in her hands. Out here, in the daylight, it no longer seemed frightening, only sad.

Behind her, the ghosts were quiet. Rey could feel them watching her. She looked over at Luke.

“I burned that,” Luke said, his eyes taking on the ashen color of the helmet’s melted plasteel.

“Kylo Ren had it,” she said, but couldn’t find a reason for taking it, an excuse to give her master. A haze was appearing before her, answering her earlier call.

Anakin materialized a few feet away from Rey. When he saw what was in Rey’s hands, he did not move, his very eyes seeming to freeze. His countenance flickered, and at once he was an older man, face pale, burn patterns streaked across his face and blanched head. 

Rey held the helmet out to him and said nothing. The ghost’s fingers reached out for a moment, as if to touch it, but clenched instead into a pale blue fist.

“Destroy it,” he said, and the voice was so quiet and distorted that Rey didn’t recognize it all. But she nodded nonetheless. 

She placed the deformed mask on the ground, drew from her belt a saber that the mask had seen before, and drove the point of the blade through to the ground. The durasteel hissed and melted around the blade, the plasteel bubbling, and Rey held her blade there until the black, round form on the ground resembled nothing but a lump of coal. 

Rey hooked the saber back onto her belt. The ghost of Anakin Skywalker flickered, and smiled softly.

“Thank you.” 

Rey nodded. The ghost began to fade. 

“Are you going to mope alone eternally?” Obi-Wan called out.

Anakin smiled. “If I can.” But he came to stand by Obi-Wan, slowly, eyeing his master’s lightsaber, still floating nearby.

“It’s uglier than I remember,” said Anakin at length.

“You’re uglier than it remembers,” replied Obi-Wan.

Luke threw up his hands with a dramatic grunt, followed closely by a quip from Mace Windu, who was looking down at his own saber: “someone put this damn thing in my non-corporeal hand”. Yoda was shaking his head, and Qui-Gon was massaging his temples gingerly. A circle of ghosts, all beginning to bicker.

And Rey began to laugh. 

She laughed so hard there were tears streaming down her face. She laughed so hard she collapsed on her knees, stomach spasming so frequently that she couldn’t even make a sound anymore. She just kept laughing silently, and crying, and she thought of Han Solo’s smile and Chewbacca’s hugs, and Finn’s voice and Poe’s jacket. She thought of the smell of Maz Kanata’s keep, and General Organa’s perfect hair, and BB-8’s chirps… and hosts of Force ghosts arguing, while her master tried to play referee.

And Rey felt the Force had finally guided her home.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! Barely made it before Episode VIII upends it all, haha! I AM SO EXCITED. I hope Luke's not a grouch the entire time, and I hope I get a force ghost in there someplace!
> 
> That's all for this one, thanks for reading. :)

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware that Jedi don't just magically all become Force ghosts, I know that... but wouldn't that be more fun? :)


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